quote:

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
Is it actually true that the present is all there is?

Or is there another understanding of time that makes sense?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Without God there's no problem. Stuff meaninglessly happens.

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quote:

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Originally posted by shadeson:
It is only a 'mind' which can be conscious of it, by remembering situations in the past and anticipating the future.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
The time problem that I have with the idea of an afterlife is the thought of existing in eternity – for ever – the idea os terrifying.
GG

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quote:

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Originally posted by Moo:

quote:

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Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
The time problem that I have with the idea of an afterlife is the thought of existing in eternity – for ever – the idea os terrifying.
GG

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I have heard a saying to the effect that eternity is not time forever, but all time at once.

Another saying is that eternity is a circle, time is a tangent to that circle, and the present is the point where time touches eternity.

Moo

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quote:

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I find that difficult to like, because it seems so limiting. God cannot do with his creation, what I can do with mine? That God seems pathetically small.

Authors spend lots of tie hopping backwards and forwards in the timeline of their creations, fixing things. Today I went through a dozen years of fiction and changed a character's name, from beginning to end, from Florinda to Charlotte. If you happened to be in this story, you would never have known a Florinda. She has been Charlotte now from the very beginning, because I am outside of the timeline of that fiction, and can dip into it at any point. It is easy for me, because I have Global Search and Replace in my Word software. I find it difficult to believe that God can't do this.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gramps49:
There are two forms of time: Chronos, which is the steady progression through the ages we measure with a clock.

But there is also Kairos, which means a propitious moment for a decision or action. The Bible would say: "In the fullness of time" (KJV), newer versions will say:"the time is right."

Chronos time, for me, will never come back once the moment is gone; however, kairos time savors the moment making it last for a long period. I would say our minds are in generally kairos mode. We remember past events as if they are actually happening now because they inform our present person.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
How is God not existing a problem for stuff just happening?

And the future is null, not just indeterminate like your status Schroedinger's cat. It's not even determinate in the present: even God cannot know if it's going to rain tomorrow.

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quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Just as an author can create a world where s/he can hop from one time to another, God could similarly create a world where he could do the same. But that would mean that the future was fixed and any truly free choice impossible.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Just as an author can create a world where s/he can hop from one time to another, God could similarly create a world where he could do the same. But that would mean that the future was fixed and any truly free choice impossible.

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That doesn't follow. One reason authors have to revise their plots is that they realise that they've made their characters do things that those characters just wouldn't do. And then the author has to go back and alter the plot, either to change the circumstances leading up to the decision so that the character does what the author wants, or else to have the character do what they would do, and then change the way the plot evolves from that.

The better the author the less they just push their characters around and the more free their characters are. That no author has ever truly free characters is more a limit on human ability, rather than because the author's role outside the story is incompatible with freedom.

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This is a tangent, but... if God definitively knows the future, then our choices cannot be free, since there is no possibility, never was any possibility, of us choosing anything other than what God definitively knew the future to be. This is true even if you try like many to mince around with words like "foreknowledge" rather than "predestined." The fact is, if God knows definitively what you will do in the future, then you are not free to choose something different. And to be sure, there are many that find that a satisfactory explanation of the world.

The Open view is that the future is still open and therefore are choices are exactly what we intuitively experience them to be: free, within some constraints. Since God knows all the potential variables, God is able to anticipate all the potential possibilities and even which is the most likely choice you will make in any given scenario. But God knows them as "contingent futures" not as "definitive futures".

Again, God did not have to create a universe with an "open" future, but (IMHO) chose to do so because that is the only way in which our choices would be in any meaningful way free.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
What did He do before He started thinking about it? How long did His thinking about it last? All computable aspects are instantaneous in Him. Surely? I fancifully suspect ALL in one instant. From eternity. So what's left to 'think' about? The ... humanities? Can God ever have had an unasked question?

Do the laws which apply to THEORETICAL physics, which stand EVERY test, EVERY observation, apply to God? His processing, of data, information, is quantized? He ticks? Or is delocalization of quantum entangled pairs and their instantaneity of determinization, regardless of spatial separation, which seems to be pure 4+ dimensional playfulness (tell me that it IS theoretically necessary, purely logical, first, please!), a metaphor for that instantaneity of all calculation I posit above?

As there is no entropy in God, do perfume bottles refill from the air in heaven? At the same time as they empty in to it?
 

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Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
Usually I see time by looking at a clock or watch.
 

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Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
This is a tangent, but... if God definitively knows the future, then our choices cannot be free, since there is no possibility, never was any possibility, of us choosing anything other than what God definitively knew the future to be. This is true even if you try like many to mince around with words like "foreknowledge" rather than "predestined." The fact is, if God knows definitively what you will do in the future, then you are not free to choose something different. And to be sure, there are many that find that a satisfactory explanation of the world.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
This is a tangent, but... if God definitively knows the future, then our choices cannot be free, since there is no possibility, never was any possibility, of us choosing anything other than what God definitively knew the future to be. This is true even if you try like many to mince around with words like "foreknowledge" rather than "predestined." The fact is, if God knows definitively what you will do in the future, then you are not free to choose something different. And to be sure, there are many that find that a satisfactory explanation of the world.

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This is incorrect. The measure of your freedom - whatever it may be - is conditioned in time. In some way, you consider yourself to be "free" because you are making choices as you progress through time. And for an observer that lives alongside of you in time, this indeed means that your actions are not entirely predictable. Your internal freedom to a temporal observer expresses itself as you not being entirely determined by the observable state of the world and what we can learn about your prior history.

However, God does not live alongside of you in time. He is eternal. All of time, from its beginning (likely in a "Big Bang") to its end (whether heat death of the universe or Second Coming of Christ) is present to Him all at once. Thus the free choices that you make which render you unpredictable to other time-bound creatures are known to God. Simply because He sees all of time. This is "foreknowledge" only from your time-bound perspective. To God there is no difference between past, present and future. It is all equally present.

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quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Obviously this is not a new perspective to me. It's the one we all grew up on-- the "God is outside of time" one, where "foreknowledge" sounds like a clever way to get around the predestination/ free will debate.

The thing is, there's nothing in biblical revelation to suggest this is the case. And in fact, there's much in the Bible to suggest otherwise. Passages where God makes conditional prophesies-- where he genuinely does not seem to know which choice will be made. Passages where God even changes his mind ("repents" in fact is the word often used) of a decision because of the way things turned out. Of course, many will say those are anthropomorphisms. But since pretty much the entire old and new testaments speak of God as if he were in time as we are in time and the Bible is supposed to give us a picture, however inadequate, of who God is-- what's left?

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quote:

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Seeing God as choosing to create and then operate within a cosmos that exists in time has changed the entire way I read the Bible-- makes the whole thing make sense-- as well as fit together with my experience of the world and the intuitive way we operate in it.

To your specific and very familiar "foreknowledge" explanation: if God is in fact outside of time and has exhaustive and definitive "foreknowledge" of our future choices, then all those conditional prophesies in Scripture are meaningless. He already foreknows what we will choose, even before we have chosen it. And while God may "foreknow" it in the future, in some other dimension, there still is absolutely no way that we can choose otherwise. You can say it is only "foreknown" and not "predestined", but the end result is the same. A divinely "foreknown" future cannot be undone.

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quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Again, God did not have to create a universe with an "open" future, but (IMHO) chose to do so because that is the only way in which our choices would be in any meaningful way free.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The thing is, there's nothing in biblical revelation to suggest this is the case. And in fact, there's much in the Bible to suggest otherwise. Passages where God makes conditional prophesies-- where he genuinely does not seem to know which choice will be made. Passages where God even changes his mind ("repents" in fact is the word often used) of a decision because of the way things turned out. Of course, many will say those are anthropomorphisms. But since pretty much the entire old and new testaments speak of God as if he were in time as we are in time and the Bible is supposed to give us a picture, however inadequate, of who God is-- what's left?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Seeing God as choosing to create and then operate within a cosmos that exists in time has changed the entire way I read the Bible-- makes the whole thing make sense-- as well as fit together with my experience of the world and the intuitive way we operate in it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
To your specific and very familiar "foreknowledge" explanation: if God is in fact outside of time and has exhaustive and definitive "foreknowledge" of our future choices, then all those conditional prophesies in Scripture are meaningless. He already foreknows what we will choose, even before we have chosen it. And while God may "foreknow" it in the future, in some other dimension, there still is absolutely no way that we can choose otherwise. You can say it is only "foreknown" and not "predestined", but the end result is the same. A divinely "foreknown" future cannot be undone.

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quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
A truly open future can be known. It is also a future that can be open to the intervention of a sovereign God, who can break into even an open history to insure his promises hold true-- just as a much more finite parent can still make promises to their children and intervene in history to be sure the promised treat/ holiday/ whatever happens.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Again, God did not have to create a universe with an "open" future, but (IMHO) chose to do so because that is the only way in which our choices would be in any meaningful way free.

---

Why are they not free in a meaningful way in the other case?
Let us distinguish between two meanings of free:
'Metaphysical freedom': there are other possible future chains of events, in the sense that there is only one past.
'Agent freedom': what I do depends upon my choices, within relevant constraints.

Now a classical theist position affirms agent freedom but not metaphysical freedom. Now it appears to me that the claim that without freedom we could not love depends upon agent freedom. Metaphysical freedom is irrelevant to the claim.
For example, it makes sense to say you acted out of love in the past. But the past is fixed. There is no longer any metaphyiscal freedom in the past; yet you have still acted out of love. The past has agent freedom but not metaphysical freedom..

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

Incidentally, we don't interpret the Bible to mean that the moon actually gives forth light or that the earth is flat and surrounded by sea. The sensible ones among us don't interpret it to mean the world was actually created in six days.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
Sorry - meant to say that the Bible needs to be read in the light of modern science, and to a lesser extent, philosophy. And at the moment modern science favours an actually existing future.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Also, it is philosophically easy to show that only an eternal, unchanging God can be the Creator. The bible does show God as the Creator. So I can turn this around and ask what is left if one adopts a "temporal god"? And what is left then is a demiurge, a god like any of the pagan gods, a Jupiter perhaps - but not more. Certainly that god is not the Creator in the fundamental "creation from nothing" sense that Christians have attributed to their God.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

Let's look at concrete examples. Here is god, according to you, making false promises:
""Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. And I will give to you, and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God." (Gen 17:4-8)
Of course, your god cannot possibly promise anything of that sort. How would your temporally limited god know that Abraham will be fruitful and have both literally and metaphorically many descendants? How would this god know that kings will be among the descendants of Abraham? How will God guarantee their ownership over any lands? Rather obviously, over the centuries and millennia countless free human decisions, as well as general "shit happening", could disrupt these Divine plans.

But it gets worse. Let's say your temporal god feels bound to this promise, and hence will try his utmost to make it come true. Now, unfortunately for your god, Sarah has just decided that at her age she has had quite enough of sex, and that she certainly does not want to be a mother any longer. A wonderfully free human decision right there. Now, what is your temporal god going to do? Pressure Sarah into changing her mind? Induce Abraham to rape Sarah? Create a baby in Sarah's womb against her will? Faced with an indeterminate universe full of human choice and random events, your temporal god if he wishes to guarantee a specific outcome has not choice but to throw his almighty weight around. Your temporal god will be an all-powerful bully, manipulating the world constantly to bend it to his designs, and frequently stepping on the toes of humans in the process. There is no other way for god to guarantee an outcome across millennia.

So your God makes false promises, and then in running after them becomes inevitably a bully.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

Another example, let's hear God speak again:
"Peter declared to him, 'Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.' Jesus said to him, 'Truly, I say to you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.'" (Mt 26:33-34)
Ahh, Jesus, the liar - according to you. For of course Jesus cannot possibly know this. Note that not only is Jesus saying what Peter will do, which one could consider as a shrewd guess. No, he puts a timing to this, he declares when all this will happen. Clearly, Jesus according to you must be bullshitting, and that what He said actually came true is - according to you - just a lucky guess. Nice touch to start these lies with "Truly..." then.

Now, once more, what would your temporal god have to do in order to make sure that this guess, this lie (for predicting definitely what you cannot know is a kind of lie), will end up coming true? Well, either he has to manipulate Peter's mind so that he denies the Lord against his stated intentions. Or he has to manipulate the world to put Peter under enough pressure to make him break, and then as soon as that happens he has to make some cock crow. It would be bloody inconvenient for this temporal god of yours, of course, if Peter had already the mindset of a martyr. Because then he couldn't be manipulated into failure. So your temporal god also has to carefully manage Peter prior to this event, so that Peter does not become too saintly to be manipulated at this point in time.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Cliffdweller wrote:

"But if God has definitive knowledge of the future, that means the present and the future are also fixed. Since it is impossible for you to choose anything other than what God exhaustively knows as a definitive future"

Again, I'm not sure that follows, well, not if God exists in eternity. If God sees time in it's fulness, that is, if every event that ever was, is or ever will be (that is from our linear perspective) are present to God all at once, it doesn't mean that those who exist do not have freewill. The problem only occurs when you try to apply linear terminology to God such as "foreknowledge", which strictly speaking doesn't apply to God, it only seems like that to us because God sees time and interacts with it from eternity.

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quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Cliffdweller wrote:

"But if God has definitive knowledge of the future, that means the present and the future are also fixed. Since it is impossible for you to choose anything other than what God exhaustively knows as a definitive future"

Again, I'm not sure that follows, well, not if God exists in eternity. If God sees time in it's fulness, that is, if every event that ever was, is or ever will be (that is from our linear perspective) are present to God all at once, it doesn't mean that those who exist do not have freewill. The problem only occurs when you try to apply linear terminology to God such as "foreknowledge", which strictly speaking doesn't apply to God, it only seems like that to us because God sees time and interacts with it from eternity.

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Again, just look at what it means for us, leaving God's nature out of it. If God "foreknows" that we will choose A rather than B, do we in this moment have any possibility of choosing B? If not, then our choice cannot in any way be deemed free.

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quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If you have no other possibility of choosing anything other than the choice that is known, then it's not a real choice.

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quote:

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As others have pointed out, "eternal" does not necessarily mean "outside of time."

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quote:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Usually I see time by looking at a clock or watch.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:

quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If you have no other possibility of choosing anything other than the choice that is known, then it's not a real choice.

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You have to think outside the box. It's a paradox but not necessarily one that is illogical.

quote:

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As others have pointed out, "eternal" does not necessarily mean "outside of time."

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Then it is not strictly speaking eternal.

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quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Again, God did not have to create a universe with an "open" future, but (IMHO) chose to do so because that is the only way in which our choices would be in any meaningful way free.

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Why are they not free in a meaningful way in the other case?
Let us distinguish between two meanings of free:
'Metaphysical freedom': there are other possible future chains of events, in the sense that there is only one past.
'Agent freedom': what I do depends upon my choices, within relevant constraints.

Now a classical theist position affirms agent freedom but not metaphysical freedom. Now it appears to me that the claim that without freedom we could not love depends upon agent freedom. Metaphysical freedom is irrelevant to the claim.
For example, it makes sense to say you acted out of love in the past. But the past is fixed. There is no longer any metaphyiscal freedom in the past; yet you have still acted out of love. The past has agent freedom but not metaphysical freedom..

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Your choices made in the past are unchangeable-- they are fixed, you do not have free will to change them. At the moment you made them when they were present, you had free will to choose otherwise-- they were changeable-- because the present is not fixed.

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quote:

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But if God has definitive knowledge of the future, that means the present and the future are also fixed. Since it is impossible for you to choose anything other than what God exhaustively knows as a definitive future, that means that what might feel like a free choice in the present is not at all-- since it would be impossible for you to choose anything different. Our future choices would be as determined as our past ones.

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quote:

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

Incidentally, we don't interpret the Bible to mean that the moon actually gives forth light or that the earth is flat and surrounded by sea. The sensible ones among us don't interpret it to mean the world was actually created in six days.

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Apparently, you are under the illusion that my understanding of time is based on a literalistic reading of Scripture. It's not. Like most Open Theists, I am a theistic evolutionist.

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quote:

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I will say there are a number of very well-regarded physicists who are part of the Open Theist academic group (part of AAR) to which I belong and participate. They assure me that your statement "modern science favours an actually existing future" is not an accurate reflection of where the field is at this moment.

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quote:

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If you have no other possibility of choosing anything other than the choice that is known, then it's not a real choice.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
we can rule out most kinds of "time travel" as leading to illogical scenarios. It cannot for example be that I travel back in time and kill myself before I travel back in time. Any sort of time travel that would allow such things to happen is hence ruled out a priori, if one believes in a fundamentally logical universe.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
So we can change the past by praying about it?

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Originally posted by Gee D:
And as the Son was begotten by the Father, and the Spirit proceeded from Him, all before this universe began, there must equally have been a time when the Father was without the other 2 members of the Trinity.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:

quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
And as the Son was begotten by the Father, and the Spirit proceeded from Him, all before this universe began, there must equally have been a time when the Father was without the other 2 members of the Trinity.

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That's Arianism.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:

quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
And as the Son was begotten by the Father, and the Spirit proceeded from Him, all before this universe began, there must equally have been a time when the Father was without the other 2 members of the Trinity.

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That's Arianism.

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1. An explicit affirmation of the Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit is scarcely Arianism.

2. You have failed to quote and take into account the next sentence of my post: But not in a way comparable to there having been a time before you and I were born. which takes us back to my basic proposition that whatever time there is in Heaven is not time as we know or can understand it.

Martin 60, I think that point 2 covers much of your post. The Son was eternally begotten of the Father but that is according to our comprehension of time, limited as it is by this universe. Father, Son and Spirit all existed before this universe was created and will exist after this universe ceases. The Trinity is eternal. And I'm not sure how you conclude that what I said was modalism.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
As the BMJ says: Retroactive prayer: lots of history, not much mystery, and no science

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:

quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
And as the Son was begotten by the Father, and the Spirit proceeded from Him, all before this universe began, there must equally have been a time when the Father was without the other 2 members of the Trinity.

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That's Arianism.

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1. An explicit affirmation of the Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit is scarcely Arianism.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jengie jon:

We use verbs to describe God as acting, but that is applying our experience to God's. As God is outside time this is not strictly true, or you really need some weirder tenses from Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations.

Jengie

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quote:

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Originally posted by itsarumdo:

In July 2000 patients were randomised to a control group and an intervention group. A remote, retroactive intercessory prayer was said for the well being and full recovery of the intervention group.
...Length of stay in hospital and duration of fever were significantly shorter in the intervention group than in the control group (P=0.01 and P=0.04, respectively).
CONCLUSION:

Remote, retroactive intercessory prayer said for a group is associated with a shorter stay in hospital and shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection and should be considered for use in clinical practice.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
Our time is a part of the universe, along with the 3 spatial dimensions. So time as we know and understand it did not exist before the universe came into existence and will cease if/when the universe does.

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quote:

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God's time must be different and in a way that we can neither comprehend or understand.

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quote:

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In one way, it will be like ours in that if we sing praises to Him in the afterlife, the singing will occur over a lapse of time.

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quote:

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And as the Son was begotten by the Father, and the Spirit proceeded from Him, all before this universe began, there must equally have been a time when the Father was without the other 2 members of the Trinity. But not in a way comparable to there having been a time before you and I were born.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
No weirder than believing that the possibly eternal creation was corrupted, eternally corrupted, by the immediately eternally corrupted (as in eternally begotten) Devil.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
The Arians did believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They just thought that the Son and Holy Spirit were created. A bit of argument and polemic later, both parties seem to have settled on the idea that 'there was a time when the Son was not' was a decent expression of the Arian position.
Hence the Nicene position is that the Son and Spirit are co-eternal, and that whatever is meant by 'begotten' it does not imply that there is any 'time' in any sense in which the Father exists without the Son and Spirit.
So Ad Orientem is right that you've inadvertently said something specifically associated with Arianism.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
can our actions today change the future, or is the timeline fixed (i.e. does God have a Big Picture plan that we cannot change)?

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Yes.

quote:

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Is it actually true that the present is all there is?

Or is there another understanding of time that makes sense?

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Again, yes.

I believe Boethius has come closest. Our experience of time as sequential is part of our creaturely experience, and God transcends that, living in His Eternal Now, so in a sense the present is all there is, but it includes what we would call the future and the past... and we make our decisions freely, but those free decisions are part of the pattern of the tapestry that God weaves, so in one sense we can truly say that we are free, and yet in another we can truly say that the future is determined--we're just part of what determines it.
 

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Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
What I am saying that in before the creation, before time as we know it, there were events that we can only think of in our understanding of time, an understanding which is wrong in the eternal world of God.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Russ:

quote:

---

Originally posted by itsarumdo:

In July 2000 patients were randomised to a control group and an intervention group. A remote, retroactive intercessory prayer was said for the well being and full recovery of the intervention group.
...Length of stay in hospital and duration of fever were significantly shorter in the intervention group than in the control group (P=0.01 and P=0.04, respectively).
CONCLUSION:

Remote, retroactive intercessory prayer said for a group is associated with a shorter stay in hospital and shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection and should be considered for use in clinical practice.

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If you were doing some other form of analysis or experiment, and your random sample gave you a statistically significant difference before any intervention was applied, you'd conclude there was a flaw in the randomisation procedure...

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quote:

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Originally posted by itsarumdo:
BMJ. 2001 Dec 22-29;323(7327):1450-1.
Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial.
Leibovici L1.
Author information
Abstract
....
CONCLUSION:

Remote, retroactive intercessory prayer said for a group is associated with a shorter stay in hospital and shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection and should be considered for use in clinical practice.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:

quote:

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Originally posted by itsarumdo:
BMJ. 2001 Dec 22-29;323(7327):1450-1.
Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial.
Leibovici L1.
Author information
Abstract
....
CONCLUSION:

Remote, retroactive intercessory prayer said for a group is associated with a shorter stay in hospital and shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection and should be considered for use in clinical practice.

---

A search on the 'net for meta-analysis and intercessory prayer such lovely results are not consistent.

If it was ever proved prayer works, I would abandon religion entirely.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
As Chastmastr so neatly puts it
Our experience of time as sequential is part of our creaturely experience, and God transcends that, living in His Eternal Now. I’m happy to stick with that.

---

I will happily point you to C.S. Lewis, in this case his revised version of Miracles in particular, who taught me most of what I believe in these matters.
 

---

Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by ChastMastr:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gee D:
As Chastmastr so neatly puts it
Our experience of time as sequential is part of our creaturely experience, and God transcends that, living in His Eternal Now. I’m happy to stick with that.

---

I will happily point you to C.S. Lewis, in this case his revised version of Miracles in particular, who taught me most of what I believe in these matters.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gee D:
As Chastmastr so neatly puts it
Our experience of time as sequential is part of our creaturely experience, and God transcends that, living in His Eternal Now.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:

Free will only works, I think, if God outside of the passage of time can see any possible future for us as a whole, and so knows the range of futures.

Of course, if the future is fixed (as most SF work dealing with time travel requires) then free will is meaningless - our choices are already decided. But then if the passage of time is a fiction, then maybe the sense of free will is probably a fiction too. If time does not, in an objective way, travel forwards, then maybe our perception of out actions having implications is also mistaken.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:

I suppose that this leans towards the question of whether reality itself is merely an illusion.

---

yes.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
cliffdweller. How can the same person talk such sense half the time and ...

As to whether reality is an illusion, only if the illusory is real.
 

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Posted by The Rhythm Methodist (# 17064) on :
 
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

---

if God is outside of time and has definitive knowledge of the future, it is then that free will is meaningless, since we cannot choose other that what God has eternally known us to chose.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
cliffdweller - I think we are agreeing here. What I meant was that God can be outside time, but not know which of many paths we will choose, just the futures that each decision will mean. If God knows the single future that will happen, that is where free will ceases.

Brenda and The Rhythm Methodist - Free will is, to my mind, the ability to make a choice of two actions. If God - or anyone - knows the choice we will make, it is not free. The comparison of children is not the same - in this case, we know the most likely outcome, because we know their character. Knowing the most likely result is not knowing the future.

If I toss a coin 100 times, I can predict that it will land heads around 50 times. That is not knowing the future, that is knowing probabilities. There is a huge difference - the latter enables us to manage our way through life, the former would make managing life much easier.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by balaam:
Does that mean it is Gods will that shit happens to us?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
Free will is, to my mind, the ability to make a choice of two actions. If God - or anyone - knows the choice we will make, it is not free.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin60:
How?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by balaam:
Does that mean it is Gods will that shit happens to us?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin60:
Does God know if it's going to rain tomorrow?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:

quote:

---

Originally posted by balaam:
Does that mean it is Gods will that shit happens to us?

---

I think ultimately we have to accept that God allows shit to happen, for the time being at least. I don't think there's any way round that.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin60:
What do you mean "God sees creation, including "time", in its fulness."?

How does God see the spins of electrons before their determination? How does He 'see' the phenomena that are dependent on their determination? The spinning of tossed coins is dependent on the fall of photons. So is the fall of raindrops. These are indeterminate phenomena. Until they happen. Worse, until they are observed. They cannot even be deduced once they are past. Worse. As they are happening. The information does not exist. Anywhere. Ever.

---

For us, perhaps, but why should that be so for God?
 

---

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
Snuffy - welcome! When we leave "this sphere", time does not stop, not least because those who have been to the moon have returned, in time.

What we have to separate is the measurement of time (clocks etc.) and the reality of the passing of time, which happens even if the clocks recording it may vary.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
It's neither about us, nor God. We - including Him - are irrelevant. The information, like the past and the future, does not exist. Cannot. There is no such thing as absolute reality. Now is fuzzy. The non-existent future (and past) yet fuzzier. There is nothing God can do about that except supervene. Make it so. And why would He do that?

There's only one thing ahead of us. Love.
 

---

Posted by Snuffy (# 18404) on :
 
"Snuffy - welcome! When we leave "this sphere", time does not stop, not least because those who have been to the moon have returned, in time.

What we have to separate is the measurement of time (clocks etc.) and the reality of the passing of time, which happens even if the clocks recording it may vary."

Absolutely true, SC, but you are still refering to earth time. And that is where the Star Trek writers made an effort, to leave all that behind with the understanding of the universe 1969-style. Unfortunately, it starts to fall apart now (as I have been led to understand it) because the universe should be doing one of two things: continuing to expand, accelerating and moving apart (stretching star time) or collapsing back in on itself under the influence of gravity (condensing star time) & ending with a big bang. Cosmologists are scratching their heads on that one and resorting to the theory of 'the elastic universe'.

It could be argued that time only exists for us mortals - now - in life, purely referenced to the rotation & wobbles of this world. Am inclined to resort to Colossians 1v17 as an explanation for puzzled cosmologists and anyone else. What - science and the Bible?

Science IN the Bible ...
 

---

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by The Rhythm Methodist:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

---

if God is outside of time and has definitive knowledge of the future, it is then that free will is meaningless, since we cannot choose other that what God has eternally known us to chose.

---

Why is free will then meaningless? Why does God's foreknowledge of our actions somehow mean that our choice was not (or is not) free?

Surely free will is exercised independently of God knowing what choice will be made. You could choose 'plan A' or 'plan B' (or from a multitude of others)and he would have known what you'd pick all along....but why on earth assume that his knowledge somehow impinges on your freedom?

What is the actual mechanism whereby free will is nullified by God's foreknowledge of the choice which shall be made?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
If he didn't then he wouldn't be all knowing, would he. But then "tomorrow" doesn't apply to God.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
But then "tomorrow" doesn't apply to God.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin60:
It's neither about us, nor God. We - including Him - are irrelevant. The information, like the past and the future, does not exist. Cannot. There is no such thing as absolute reality. Now is fuzzy. The non-existent future (and past) yet fuzzier. There is nothing God can do about that except supervene. Make it so. And why would He do that?

There's only one thing ahead of us. Love.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
cliffdweller - I think we are agreeing here. What I meant was that God can be outside time, but not know which of many paths we will choose, just the futures that each decision will mean. If God knows the single future that will happen, that is where free will ceases

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:

Brenda and The Rhythm Methodist - Free will is, to my mind, the ability to make a choice of two actions. If God - or anyone - knows the choice we will make, it is not free. The comparison of children is not the same - in this case, we know the most likely outcome, because we know their character. Knowing the most likely result is not knowing the future.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

---

Originally posted by The Rhythm Methodist:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

---

if God is outside of time and has definitive knowledge of the future, it is then that free will is meaningless, since we cannot choose other that what God has eternally known us to chose.

---

Why is free will then meaningless? Why does God's foreknowledge of our actions somehow mean that our choice was not (or is not) free?

Surely free will is exercised independently of God knowing what choice will be made. You could choose 'plan A' or 'plan B' (or from a multitude of others)and he would have known what you'd pick all along....but why on earth assume that his knowledge somehow impinges on your freedom?

What is the actual mechanism whereby free will is nullified by God's foreknowledge of the choice which shall be made?

---

Because if God foreknows that you will choose A, then you cannot choose B. If you cannot choose B, then for choice of A was not freely made, and what appeared to be free will was in fact an illusion.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
If he didn't then he wouldn't be all knowing, would he. But then "tomorrow" doesn't apply to God.

---

God is all-knowing because he knows everything that can be known. He knows everything about the past and everything about the present. And he knows every future possibility (and has a plan for each contingency)-- which means he knows MORE (at least in quantity) than what he would know in the foreknowledge scenario.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
But then "tomorrow" doesn't apply to God.

---

This is one of those things we've said so often that it's become a "just so" without anyone feeling like they need to prove or defend it. But it actually doesn't fit with either biblical revelation or our experience of God.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin60:
Does God know if it's going to rain tomorrow?

---

quote:

---

Because if God foreknows that you will choose A, then you cannot choose B. If you cannot choose B, then for choice of A was not freely made, and what appeared to be free will was in fact an illusion.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin60:
It's neither about us, nor God. We - including Him - are irrelevant. The information, like the past and the future, does not exist. Cannot. There is no such thing as absolute reality. Now is fuzzy. The non-existent future (and past) yet fuzzier.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by balaam:
Does that mean it is Gods will that shit happens to us?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Because if God foreknows that you will choose A, then you cannot choose B. If you cannot choose B, then for choice of A was not freely made, and what appeared to be free will was in fact an illusion.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by The Rhythm Methodist:
Originally posted by cliffdweller, in response to <snip> "What is the actual mechanism whereby free will is nullified by God's foreknowledge of the choice which shall be made?"

quote:

---

Because if God foreknows that you will choose A, then you cannot choose B. If you cannot choose B, then for choice of A was not freely made, and what appeared to be free will was in fact an illusion.

---

Thank you for the response, cliffdweller.

The concept of freewill presupposes you could choose A or B. Until the moment your decision is reached, both options are open to you. It is entirely irrelevant to the freewill process if God or even your goldfish knows what choice you will make - that knowledge in no way influences your choice, or curtails the freedom in which it was made. The real illusion here, is the notion that foreknowledge negates freewill. I have yet to see any logical reason presented for that supposition.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
You speak as if the future, as we understand it, does not exist to God. I would argue otherwise, that it does exist. It might not appear to us as such, but that's only because we are linear.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
But if God - or anyone - knows that I will choose x, that is not then my free choice, because I no longer have the option of choosing y.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

---

Originally posted by balaam:
Does that mean it is Gods will that shit happens to us?

---

Exactly. Once you go down the road of placing God outside of time, you end up diminishing free will, which means you've got to place God at the center of evil, whether as an active cause or as passively permitting it to occur.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Because if God foreknows that you will choose A, then you cannot choose B. If you cannot choose B, then for choice of A was not freely made, and what appeared to be free will was in fact an illusion.

---

Let's distinguish between de re necessity and de dicto necessity.
De re necessity is part of the fabric of reality.
De dicto necessity is merely the logical consequence of the situation presupposed.

Example: if a couple have three children, then their third child cannot have any younger siblings. It's impossible. But that's a de dicto necessity. It's not a de re necessity. The parents could have another child. If both parents became infertile, then they couldn't have another child, and that would be a de re necessity.

Now, if you have a mental block meaning that you cannot pick chocolate cake when offered a menu, that's a de re necessity: you cannot choose chocolate cake. That's a limit on your free will. But if you say 'if God foreknows that you will choose apple strudel, then you cannot choose chocolate cake', then that's merely de dicto. De dicto necessity is not a limit on your free will, since it derives from your choice.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
You speak as if the future, as we understand it, does not exist to God. I would argue otherwise, that it does exist. It might not appear to us as such, but that's only because we are linear.

---

Yes, you understand my position. The future exists for God as contingent possibilities. He knows each contingent possibility as deeply and completely as we know settled realities. But he cannot foreknow them as definitive realities if the future is truly open.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Because if God foreknows that you will choose A, then you cannot choose B. If you cannot choose B, then for choice of A was not freely made, and what appeared to be free will was in fact an illusion.

---

Let's distinguish between de re necessity and de dicto necessity.
De re necessity is part of the fabric of reality.
De dicto necessity is merely the logical consequence of the situation presupposed.

Example: if a couple have three children, then their third child cannot have any younger siblings. It's impossible. But that's a de dicto necessity. It's not a de re necessity. The parents could have another child. If both parents became infertile, then they couldn't have another child, and that would be a de re necessity.

Now, if you have a mental block meaning that you cannot pick chocolate cake when offered a menu, that's a de re necessity: you cannot choose chocolate cake. That's a limit on your free will. But if you say 'if God foreknows that you will choose apple strudel, then you cannot choose chocolate cake', then that's merely de dicto. De dicto necessity is not a limit on your free will, since it derives from your choice.

---

If I'm following your definitions, you have argued my point and your final summation does not follow logically. Foreknowledge is a limit on free will, as a logical consequence of the situation presupposed. A logical consequence of God having definitive foreknowledge of the future is that we cannot choose other than what he foreknew-- which means we cannot choose freely.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

---

Originally posted by balaam:
Does that mean it is Gods will that shit happens to us?

---

Exactly. Once you go down the road of placing God outside of time, you end up diminishing free will, which means you've got to place God at the center of evil, whether as an active cause or as passively permitting it to occur.

---

The alternative is an impotent God who is unable to do anything about evil.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Foreknowledge is a poor word. Strictly speaking I don't think it can apply to God, that is if what we call past, present and future are present to God now.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
You speak as if the future, as we understand it, does not exist to God. I would argue otherwise, that it does exist. It might not appear to us as such, but that's only because we are linear.

---

Yes, you understand my position. The future exists for God as contingent possibilities. He knows each contingent possibility as deeply and completely as we know settled realities. But he cannot foreknow them as definitive realities if the future is truly open.

---

No. That's not what I meant at all.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
That's certainly one alternative, but there are others.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
But there's no reason to assume that is the case, other than habit.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If I'm following your definitions, you have argued my point and your final summation does not follow logically. Foreknowledge is a limit on free will, as a logical consequence of the situation presupposed. A logical consequence of God having definitive foreknowledge of the future is that we cannot choose other than what he foreknew-- which means we cannot choose freely.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If I'm following your definitions, you have argued my point and your final summation does not follow logically. Foreknowledge is a limit on free will, as a logical consequence of the situation presupposed. A logical consequence of God having definitive foreknowledge of the future is that we cannot choose other than what he foreknew-- which means we cannot choose freely.

---

I'm not sure you are following my definitions. It's a logical consequence of the fact that you posted what you did that you couldn't have chosen not to post. That's a de dicto couldn't. It doesn't follow that you de re couldn't have chosen not to post.
To put it another way: a de re couldn't explains why you had to post. If there were a de re couldn't then you didn't have freedom. A de dicto couldn't doesn't explain why anything: it merely describes the situation further. A de dicto couldn't merely explains the consequences of your choice.
To say that God's foreknowledge means we can't choose otherwise is merely de dicto: that just explains what it means for us to choose. It is merely that it is one of the consequences of our free future choices that God 'foreknows' them. It doesn't say that God's foreknowledge makes us choose or forces us to choose or interferes with our freedom to choose.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If I'm following your definitions, you have argued my point and your final summation does not follow logically. Foreknowledge is a limit on free will, as a logical consequence of the situation presupposed. A logical consequence of God having definitive foreknowledge of the future is that we cannot choose other than what he foreknew-- which means we cannot choose freely.

---

I also don't agree that the claim that God is outside time is merely arbitary or traditional. There were good reasons for believing it then; there are good reasons for believing it now. (Some mystical experience; Einsteinian physics (contra your friend, whose argument I haven't seen), the belief that time depends on God and not the other way round...)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Snuffy:
We debate free will & determinism and God's omnipotence & omniscience until our heads explode with the counter arguments & contradictions.

---

While it may seem like a trivial argument, it has real-world consequences that for me change everything about the way I relate to God. It particularly has real-life consequences for the way we understand the purpose and meaning of prayer. It has real life consequences for the way we understand the problem of theodicy, and the ways we engage evil and suffering in the world, both human-caused and natural. For many of us, making a shift from an Augustinian/Calvinist understanding of divine nature to an open/relational paradigm has breathed life into our reading of Scripture and brought passion, immediacy, and intimacy to our experience of God in our world today.

At the same time, I would argue that, despite our default Augustinian/Calvinist paradigms that so pervade our thinking that many posters can make these "just so" arguments, I would argue that the open/relational paradigm is the way most Christians naturally relate to God. Despite our systematic theology, most of us pray, worship and experience God as if he were in time, and as if future history were impacted by those choices. And that's a problem, because when we adopt an intellectual paradigm that is contrary to our experience of God it distances us from God. We intuitively experience God one way, but we have to discount those experiences because they don't fit our paradigm. But when we adopt an intellectual paradigm that is consistent with our experience of God (much like physicists and other scientists will adapt their theories to fit better with the evidence of their exploration) we find life and joy and passion as we come to understand God on a deeper level.

Or at least that's been my experience. ymmv.
 

---

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 

 

---

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The fact that you suddenly switch gears in the last sentence and post a conclusion that is completely contrary to your argument up until the final sentence does not change the logical thrust of the argument.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
For many of us, making a shift from an Augustinian/Calvinist understanding of divine nature to an open/relational paradigm has breathed life into our reading of Scripture and brought passion, immediacy, and intimacy to our experience of God in our world today.

Or at least that's been my experience. ymmv.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

---

Originally posted by balaam:
Does that mean it is Gods will that shit happens to us?

---

Exactly. Once you go down the road of placing God outside of time, you end up diminishing free will, which means you've got to place God at the center of evil, whether as an active cause or as passively permitting it to occur.

---

The alternative is an impotent God who is unable to do anything about evil.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The fact that you suddenly switch gears in the last sentence and post a conclusion that is completely contrary to your argument up until the final sentence does not change the logical thrust of the argument.

---

If you think I'm switching gears you haven't understood my argument.

Consider the following fallacious argument:
I read your post. So you couldn't have posted anything other than what you did post. If you couldn't have posted anything other than what you did post, you don't have free will.

The argument is fallacious because it depends upon an ambiguity in 'couldn't have'. (It is de dicto in the first usage, and de re in the second usage.) My contention is that your argument about God's foreknowledge is fallacious for exactly the same reason.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
The alternative is an impotent God who is unable to do anything about evil.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
The alternative is an impotent God who is unable to do anything about evil.

---

Do you really find that any more unsettling than a God who is able to stop evil, but doesn't?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ChastMastr:
Saying that God foreknows things puts Him inside time. It's not so much that, as that He already encompasses/transcends what we perceive as past, present and future.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ChastMastr:
Saying that God foreknows things puts Him inside time. It's not so much that, as that He already encompasses/transcends what we perceive as past, present and future. It's a little like that bit by Douglas Adams about grammar and time travel.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
The alternative is an impotent God who is unable to do anything about evil.

---

Do you really find that any more unsettling than a God who is able to stop evil, but doesn't?

---

Yes, because we have a promise that it won't always be so, that is when our Lord returns. If he is unable then that promise essentially means nothing except to give false hope.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Lovely bit of grammatical gymnastics, but not sure if that changes anything.

---

It's been my basic understanding of how all of this works since I became a Christian.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
That's fine ChastMastr. God bless you and keep you in it. He met you with it, in it. As long as there are humans, many will have to believe as you do. Nothing those who can't could ever say can change that. And vice versa. I tried a moment of doubt last night, the first hot flush of cold sweat that I could be wrong. Like the attraction of atheism. I couldn't sustain it.

God doesn't have to open the desk draw to see and touch the ball of Blu-Tack ('the future') or to take it out and put it on the desk. Any 4-D being can do that. But He can't if it isn't there no matter that He supervenes, pervades, transcends, grounds and thinks (11-17)+ dimensions.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
The DVD ended up, after a moment on the shelf, in a box on top of the wardrobe where presents for my wife accumulate. God KNEW that would happen for almost sure, knowing me a tad better than I do. But not when and not in its final disposition and trajectory. None of that is knowable at ANY time. Especially when I factored in a TRUE random number of seconds.
 

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Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If you had infallible foreknowledge of what I was going to write, could I have written something else? If so, then your foreknowledge was not infallible. If not, then I was not free to write something else.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
The only mortals who manipulate this tool, on a very small stage, are writers, often badly. (Read Les Miserables and the way people keep on running into each other by chance, you would think that the entire population of France was less than a hundred people.)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ChastMastr:

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Lovely bit of grammatical gymnastics, but not sure if that changes anything.

---

It's been my basic understanding of how all of this works since I became a Christian.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If you had infallible foreknowledge of what I was going to write, could I have written something else? If so, then your foreknowledge was not infallible. If not, then I was not free to write something else.

---

I've been trying to explain that I think the word 'could' is ambiguous. The first half of your dilemma applies whether 'could' is used in a de re sense or a de dicto sense. The second half of your dilemma only applies if the word 'could' is used in a de re sense.

If Hercule Poirot finds no footprints in the flower bed, then the murderer couldn't have left by the window. But that doesn't mean the murderer wasn't free to leave by the window.
If Hercule Poirot discovers that the window was locked and the lock was jammed, then the murderer couldn't have left by the window. That does mean the murderer wasn't free to leave by the window.

If God had foreknowledge of my actions, I 'couldn't' have done otherwise only in the flowerbed sense of 'couldn't'. I could have done otherwise in the 'locked window' sense of 'couldn't'. And it is only the locked window sense that would mean I wasn't free.

I'll pass over that 'foreknowledge', if God is outside time, does not mean the same as if God is in time. Nevertheless it really does affect the argument.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
... And because he is thoroughly and completely aware of every contingent possibility and all the contingent ramifications of each, he is therefore able to make sure promises in which we can place our hopes.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
God knows all of the possible futures but does not need to know which will happen.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dafyd:

If Hercule Poirot finds no footprints in the flower bed, then the murderer couldn't have left by the window. But that doesn't mean the murderer wasn't free to leave by the window.
If Hercule Poirot discovers that the window was locked and the lock was jammed, then the murderer couldn't have left by the window. That does mean the murderer wasn't free to leave by the window.

If God had foreknowledge of my actions, I 'couldn't' have done otherwise only in the flowerbed sense of 'couldn't'. I could have done otherwise in the 'locked window' sense of 'couldn't'. And it is only the locked window sense that would mean I wasn't free..

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by balaam:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
God knows all of the possible futures but does not need to know which will happen.

---

I'm sorry, I do not understand. Can you expand please.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Yes, no disputing it is the predominant understanding within contemporary Western Christians. The question is why? Is it because it fits best with science, with logic, or with biblical revelation?

---

quote:

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Or is it because of the influence of later philosophies that have nothing to do with those three things?

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Originally posted by ChastMastr:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Yes, no disputing it is the predominant understanding within contemporary Western Christians. The question is why? Is it because it fits best with science, with logic, or with biblical revelation?

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I believe so, yes, though I'd say "with Reason, Scripture, and Christian Tradition" -- science, unless you mean math, doesn't (and needn't) come into it a whole lot.

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I don't see at all how your Poirot example has anything at all to do with divine foreknowledge. You keep comparing apples with oranges.

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At the point when Poirot finds ("sees") the footprints in the flower bed, the murderer is NOT free to leave from the window-- s/he has already left thru the flower bed. S/he cannot unchoose it, therefore at that point does not have free will to leave any way s/he wants. That is more analogous to the question of foreknowledge, since once God has foreseen which way the murderer will escape, it cannot be changed-- the person does not have free will to choose other than what God has foreseen, even if God is outside of time and they are not.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

You say 'once God has foreseen which way the murderer leaves it cannot be changed'. (I'm not quite happy with that, since to me the word 'once' implies that God foreseeing something is something that happens at a point in time before the murderer leaving.) Freewill doesn't mean, as you say up above, that we can remake decisions once they're made - so it doesn't matter that once the murderer leaves it cannot be changed.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

I don't see that leaving the future open makes any difference anyway. It doesn't matter to us if the future doesn't exist, since if the future doesn't exist there isn't any future us to have free will in the non-existent future. If we're making a decision in the present there is only the present moment that we're in - the non-existence of any future moments makes no difference to that either way.

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Originally posted by balaam:

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
God knows all of the possible futures but does not need to know which will happen.

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I'm sorry, I do not understand. Can you expand please.

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

You say 'once God has foreseen which way the murderer leaves it cannot be changed'. (I'm not quite happy with that, since to me the word 'once' implies that God foreseeing something is something that happens at a point in time before the murderer leaving.) Freewill doesn't mean, as you say up above, that we can remake decisions once they're made - so it doesn't matter that once the murderer leaves it cannot be changed.

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Again, this is an argument for my position. Just as we are not free to unchange an action that has already been made, we are not free to unchange an action that has already been divinely foreseen. If you are not free to choose differently, there can be no reasonable way your decision can be described as free.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

I don't see that leaving the future open makes any difference anyway. It doesn't matter to us if the future doesn't exist, since if the future doesn't exist there isn't any future us to have free will in the non-existent future. If we're making a decision in the present there is only the present moment that we're in - the non-existence of any future moments makes no difference to that either way.

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It makes a difference for the reasons stated above.

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If God foreknows the future, undermining free will, it creates all sorts of problem with theodicy and human moral responsibility.

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The open view of the future is most consistent with the language and narrative of Scripture. The so-called "classical" view requires large chunks of Scripture to be dismissed as "anthropomorphizing."

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Prayer doesn't make much sense in the classical view, but in the open view of the future, prayer is meaningful and signficant.

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The open view of the future aligns with the way we intuitively act in the world and the way we relate to God. The reverse is true of the classical view. Having a theological framework that is consistent our experience of God helps us to know God more deeply; whereas a theological framework that is inconsistent distances us from God.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

You say 'once God has foreseen which way the murderer leaves it cannot be changed'. (I'm not quite happy with that, since to me the word 'once' implies that God foreseeing something is something that happens at a point in time before the murderer leaving.) Freewill doesn't mean, as you say up above, that we can remake decisions once they're made - so it doesn't matter that once the murderer leaves it cannot be changed.

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Again, this is an argument for my position. Just as we are not free to unchange an action that has already been made, we are not free to unchange an action that has already been divinely foreseen. If you are not free to choose differently, there can be no reasonable way your decision can be described as free.

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But the fact that we can't unmake a decision once it's made doesn't mean we weren't free to make it. Likewise, the fact that we can't not make a decision God has foreseen doesn't mean we won't be free when we make it.

Consider:
If you choose to read my post then you can't choose not to read this post. If you can't choose not to read this post then your choice to read it isn't free.
That is fallacious. I think your argument is fallacious for the same reason.
At least, instead of just saying the same thing again, you need to explain why God's foreknowledge is supposed to stop us being free in a way that other things don't.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Prayer doesn't make much sense in the classical view, but in the open view of the future, prayer is meaningful and signficant.

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In my experience, the opposite is true.

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
At one point in time-- the present-- you can choose freely. At another point in time-- the future (when the choice is past) you are not free to choose. In the present you are free to read or not read whatever you choose, but having chosen and acted on the choice, you are not free to unread what you have already chosen to read (how many times have we all uttered those words!).

Some thing with foreknowledge. If God has definitive foreknowledge of our future choices, we cannot choose other than what he has foreknown for the exact same reason we cannot unchoose an action we have already chosen.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Ad Orientem. How?

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Well, personally I think you're both wrong. God is neither a clairvoyant predicting a future that doesn't yet exist nor a gambler who hedges his bets.

God knew from eternity everything that would ever happen. He knew that I would be sitting here writing this post whilst it's raining outside, not as a possibility from an infinite number of possibilities but as something already completed. The Incarnation was not a contingency plan. God knew that Adam would sin and creation would fall from before the foundation of the world.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
At one point in time-- the present-- you can choose freely. At another point in time-- the future (when the choice is past) you are not free to choose. In the present you are free to read or not read whatever you choose, but having chosen and acted on the choice, you are not free to unread what you have already chosen to read (how many times have we all uttered those words!).

Some thing with foreknowledge. If God has definitive foreknowledge of our future choices, we cannot choose other than what he has foreknown for the exact same reason we cannot unchoose an action we have already chosen.

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The reason we cannot unchoose an action we have already chosen is that we can only choose or unchoose actions at the time we make them. We make choices in the present. That's a truism.

...It is not God's past knowledge of our past actions that stops us from changing them.

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We are circling the same territory here. Again, the two are precisely the same. God's definitive foreknowledge of our future choices would have the exact same restraining effect on free will as time does. We can't unchoose something that has already been chosen, we can't choose differently from something that has already been definitively known. They operate very much in the same way to eliminate human freedom.

But we are both repeating ourselves at this point-- a sure sign that the debate has reached its inevitable stalemate.
 

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Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :
 
Funnily enough, Cliffdweller, I agree with your posts more often than you realise#

not sure which emoticon to use here

 

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Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 

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Originally posted by itsarumdo:
Funnily enough, Cliffdweller, I agree with your posts more often than you realise

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I was thinking the same thing back on the prayer thread! I'm gonna go with the classic
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
That's a category error of infinite magnitude.

God's existence is to be desired. To have to believe that He knows how today's indeterminate electrons will spin tomorrow is ... psychologically fascinating.
 

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Posted by Snuffy (# 18404) on :
 

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:

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Originally posted by Snuffy:
We debate free will & determinism and God's omnipotence & omniscience until our heads explode with the counter arguments & contradictions.

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While it may seem like a trivial argument, it has real-world consequences that for me change everything about the way I relate to God. It particularly has real-life consequences for the way we understand the purpose and meaning of prayer. It has real life consequences for the way we understand the problem of theodicy, and the ways we engage evil and suffering in the world, both human-caused and natural. For many of us, making a shift from an Augustinian/Calvinist understanding of divine nature to an open/relational paradigm has breathed life into our reading of Scripture and brought passion, immediacy, and intimacy to our experience of God in our world today.

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Originally posted by Snuffy:
As I understand it He (God, fully outside time), and we (fully inside that version of time that depends on the rotation of the spheres that are important to us, especially while we are on one of them!) relate to God (the Father) through the person of the Godhead who subjected Himself to our measure of time for our sakes.

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But the God fully outside time idea breaks down in that it isn't just through God becoming man that God relates within our time frame.

There's creation, Abraham, the Exodus and giving the law, the Judean monarchy, the exile and return. All revaluations of God in a time frame. The fact that God shows himself within time over and over again makes me think that the fully in fully outside time is more than a little philosophically optimistic.

We humans are inside time, I'll give you that. Unfortunately as we are inside time seeing an eternal perspective for us is impossible, and anything else is just philosophical speculation which does not affect the way we encounter God, which is within time.

The practical stuff, how we encounter God, is what is important.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
Perfect balaam.

cliffdweller, we agree on the meaninglessness of God, The Movie, we've got the same DNA there. But we're hybridized differently with other species with regard to creation.

And I'm being too fair there. The unvigorous, sterile hybridization is entirely yours. The God, The Movie school is coherent based on that totally unnecessary but quaint premiss.
 

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Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
I have no idea whether to feel delighted or offended or simply misunderstood by that.
 

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Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :
 

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I would argue that this default view of the "timelessness" of God is pretty much incompatible with both Scripture and Reason.

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Church tradition is pretty diverse on this topic

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even within discrete groups much less from one group to another. Heck, even Calvin himself is internally inconsistent.

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Originally posted by balaam:
But the God fully outside time idea breaks down in that it isn't just through God becoming man that God relates within our time frame.

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Originally posted by ChastMastr:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
[qb] I would argue that this default view of the "timelessness" of Church tradition is pretty diverse on this topic

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even within discrete groups much less from one group to another. Heck, even Calvin himself is internally inconsistent.

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Ah, I mean Christian Tradition in terms of mainly the Catholic/Orthodox end of the spectrum. No offense to any Calvinists, but I would not include Calvinism as part of the kind of Tradition I'm talking about at all, for instance.

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Originally posted by ChastMastr:

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Originally posted by balaam:
But the God fully outside time idea breaks down in that it isn't just through God becoming man that God relates within our time frame.

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I think it is better to say that God transcends time (and, indeed, everything else--any other dimensions, etc.). He's not just outside of it, like a moon in orbit peering down with a telescope, but he's not just inside it either.

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Some Open Theists would espouse a view somewhat similar to that, fwiw-- that God inherently transcends time, but voluntarily chose to create and enter into a time-dependent universe because that is the only way to have relationship with his creatures.

[ 25. May 2015, 22:47: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
Both. What have I misunderstood? You believe in the demiurge. That creation was somehow changed for the bad in the second Planck tick or less in the person of Satan, having just been created good, who then changed all creation that followed. That makes God The Movie reasonable by comparison.
 

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Posted by OliviaCA (# 18399) on :
 
Something I love to think about is that, in this model world that we live in anyway, the future changes the past.

eg. Do you remember when dinosaurs had bare scaly/leathery skin, and no feathers?


[ 27. May 2015, 12:35: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]
 

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Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
I remember when the future was supposed to have flying cars.
 

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Posted by OliviaCA (# 18399) on :
 

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I remember when the future was supposed to have flying cars.

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Originally posted by OliviaCA:
Something I love to think about is that, in this model world that we live in anyway, the future changes the past.

eg. Do you remember when dinosaurs had bare scaly/leathery skin, and no feathers?

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I remember when the future was supposed to have flying cars.

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